


i'd make a deal with god

by vivamusmealesbia



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: 1967, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26309716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivamusmealesbia/pseuds/vivamusmealesbia
Summary: The day after John and Paul trip together for the first time, George does some thinking.
Relationships: John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 5
Kudos: 41





	i'd make a deal with god

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in March 1967. Title is from Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush.

They showed up to the studio together. 35 minutes after the time they had agreed to start, exactly, early for John and late for Paul, the sort of Lennon-McCartney compromise they were so good at. George _knows_. 

He’s getting ahead of himself though, because George may know but he doesn’t know what he knows. Really, he doesn’t know if there’s anything _to know_. It could very easily be nothing at all, except that he’s rarely wrong about these things, especially when it comes to them. 

John’s wearing a shirt of Paul’s, a sort of purple floral one. One of the sleeves is fraying, and he’s left a button open at the top. It makes perfect sense, because John stayed over at Paul’s for good reason, and would want something clean to wear in the morning. No sense in trekking out to Weybridge when the studio was so close to Paul’s place. Even if John hadn’t stayed over, they all four borrowed each other’s clothes all the time. It was business as normal, or at least normal for the latest iteration of Beatleworld they had carved out for themselves. None of this settled the chill that had run down George’s neck and settled somewhere at the base of his spine. 

Beatleworld—the cloud of madness, the suspension of rules that descended upon every hotel suite, stadium, and recording studio the four-headed-monster encountered in its path—could account for a lot. It could certainly account for a normal amount of John and Paul’s drama, to some degree it even thrived on it. It might cause a lot of headaches, even to George, but their games were nothing new. If it led to great songs, which it sometimes did, it was surely all worth it. Beatleworld survived on Beatle-weirdness. Things were always dealt with. 

So George _knows_. What does he know? 

For starters: this didn’t look like business-as-normal-Beatle-weirdness. This wasn’t John’s needling or Paul’s coy silent treatment, the two of them bickering through plane rides and shuffling around the corners of parties, ribbing for the camera because they know what the people want, even when they don’t know what each other wants. In a word, this wasn’t a Lennon-McCartney problem, one to be solved by a week apart or a chat from Brian or something-or-other. This was a JohnandPaul problem, and no one had yet been able to find a solution for one of those, least of all the two bastards involved. 

George knew something was bound to happen when they saw John on that roof, and as worried as George was at the time, the scene made sense in their twisted way. Not that George thought John took the tab on purpose—his wide-eyed terror attested to that—but the fact was this: though neither of them would ever admit it, John was just the sort of person who liked to be rescued sometimes, and Paul was the sort of person who liked rescuing him. When Mal came in earlier today, saying not only had Paul brought John home, but he had joined John _there_ , that there was no part of the universe they had not traveled together, George nearly said _of course_ out loud—it just made sense. Of course Paul would. 

That’s the thing, is that Lennon-McCartney games were often products of being, well, Lennon-McCartney, as in being the most famous and acclaimed (and didn’t they know it) composers on God’s green earth since bloody Beethoven, and as such the rules of the game were liable to change as the nature of Lennon-McCartney changed. They were hit-making games, crowd-wooing games. The backstage games changed as the stages got bigger. 

JohnandPaul games have stayed awfully the same—different clothes, different colors, sometimes even the odd role-reversal, but much the same. That’s what George was afraid of, what he thought they had all moved past. 

That’s what George had to stop thinking about, generally speaking, because those two would drive him crazy, but also because there was work to be done. They had an album to finish, a great one at that, and that’s what they were there to do. So George put out his cigarette, finished the dredges of his cup of tea, and got up to tune his guitar.

Paul already had his bass in hand, plucking a quiet line out and mulling over the day’s business. John was fiddling with some lyric sheets, and Paul called out something to him, something inconsequential, usual studio chatter, a question maybe, or a quick suggestion. John called something in response, and George looked up from his frets, satisfied with his tuning. Paul nodded back, cheery, and went back to his bass. John didn’t go back to scratching out lyrics, though. John’s eyes stayed on Paul. They stayed on Paul as his fingers picked away unaware, staring softly for far too long to be explained away by any Beatle-business. There’s none of that old glee of the chase in his eyes, because George realizes, this isn’t one of their games. His blood runs cold.

What’s worse is the lack of surprise, because in that moment it occurs to George that he’s seen this look before, if not for a while. Back in the old days, the really old days, before Hamburg even, before they learned not to show their hands, sometimes the fledging Quarrymen would have band practice in Pete Shotton’s garden, with Paul standing on John’s right, and whatever other shit players they had at the time standing dutifully behind. John would clear his throat and announce the next song to the pretend-audience, and Paul would look over at him. Everyone would start playing, John wailing away at his three-pound guitar and Paul would keep looking. 

George supposes he’s a writer, not in the way that John is certainly, not in the way that Paul is, but when he can find the energy to duck out of their shadow, a writer nonetheless. He couldn’t put that look into words for anything—not for all the money in America, or a whole album of his own songs, or eternal peace. Couldn’t if he wanted to, and he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to get messed up in this, feels embarrassed at seeing something he knows he wasn’t supposed to. 

It’s not quite the same though, because unlike a sharp-edged teenage John, Paul looks back. Reaches his arm up to fix the tuning and catches John staring. It’s near imperceptible, the way Paul settles into being looked at, the way he looks back, but it’s easy, so easy. They’re comfortable with it for once, filling up this moment while everyone bustles around them unaware, looking at each other. They’re not embarrassed. 

George feels a bit frantic, feels panic buzzing in his limbs. His hand stills where he was strumming. _You should be, you poor fools, you should be embarrassed,_ he thinks, _how can you put it all out there so easily?_

A horrible feeling of déjà vu washes over George, and he remembers a scene from years ago: October 1961, backstage at the Cavern. In just his leather jacket he was chilly outside and is already beginning to sweat in the cramped space. Paul and John had just gotten back from Paris the previous morning. George was yelling at them, _How could you leave like that, we had gigs scheduled, you two are bloody mad you are, leaving the fucking country, christ_ and the two of them won’t stop looking at each other. Pete’s made himself scarce, and John sits down on an amp, looking self-satisfied, letting George tire himself out. They’ve got new haircuts, the same bohemian look they used to mock Stuart for relentlessly. He chatters back, _A lad’s entitled to his birthday, isn’t he?_ and the moment is broken, but it was there, and George saw it. 

He saw the real, honest, JohnandPaul truth, deep and chilling, something that probably even Ringo couldn’t understand. Even in Hamburg they had some idea of themselves as Beatle John and Beatle Paul, had some idea of their future as musicians and songwriters. George is the only one who knew Paul pre-John, and he thinks even then, the Paul he knows was only a half- sketched shadow, completed on the day he met John. George doesn’t know what a pre-Paul John looked like, but he sickly imagines a writhing mass of insecurities and pain, untamed. Since 1957 it’s been John and Paul all the way down, whether they were Beatles, or whether they had fucked off to Paris for good and been Left-Bank artists, or if they had spent the rest of their life holed up in the backrooms of sad Liverpool bars. George can, if he wants to feel dismal, picture an alternate future where they never took off and he lived quietly, an electrician who made his mother proud. He knows John can’t imagine such a future, a version of himself severed from Paul, and thinks grimly of every joking interview where John said if he hadn’t been a Beatle he’d be in prison. It’s one for the other, down for the count, they went to Paris and came back mystically conjoined. 

George thinks he’s too smart for his own good, and because of this he knows he’s been very, very stupid. He doesn’t have any more time to sit and stew as Paul is up and conducting things, and they’re back to _Getting Better_ , to what they know and what they’re good at. Better all the time baby, and it’s clear from watching John watching Paul that they believe it. 

All George can think about, in between remembering chords and the marching rhythm of his foot tapping on the ground, is that whatever sort of lysergic-born bond he might’ve had with John has slipped through his fingers completely. There’s the awful, studio games side of it—any hope of currying favor for more songs on the album has been thrown out the window—but there’s more to it than that. Sometime it’s just nice to see someone and be seen in return, and John _did_ make him feel seen when they turned on together. George had hoped there was a part of that which could be kept pure and separate from the surrounding mess of it, Paul’s prudish refusal and John’s rage, both of them quietly seething with jealousy. Watching them share the microphone, trading lines back and forth, sour and sweet, sweet and sour, George isn’t feeling too optimistic about keeping things pure. 

It really is ’61 all over again, George thinks, him darting around Liverpool all day with a restless John, and Paul off doing his own thing. John wouldn’t forgive him for it, even if it was so _Paul_ , so _Sorry lads, I’ve got to consider me options, y’know, got to think about Mike and Da, got to think these things through_. John would bitch and moan day and night, because wasn’t it clear to Paul? Wasn’t it obvious to him that there was only one option and it was rock and roll until the grey morning hours, it was sticky nightclub floors and the E7 chord, it was _John, John, John,_ and his global gospel of debauchery. John and George were close then, for months, until Paul decided he didn’t want to spend the rest of his days winding coil for a living, jumped the fence at the factory yard, and reasserted his place on John’s right. History repeats itself, it often seems. 

They do a few more takes, wrap up the loose ends of the song. Paul’s in his element, glowing at the seams, clasping John on the shoulder, encouraging him. John looks genuinely pleased, not just smirking, or amused, or glad at getting one over on someone, but really happy. He looks like he’s on steady ground. 

George would like to be happy for them too, even if the phrase curls in his stomach something fierce, makes him think of a distant cousin getting engaged rather than his _two best mates, christ,_ but he felt out of his depth. He had seen their most vicious games and taken them in stride, they all had, but now it was some sort of resolution he feared. John and Paul were excellent at playing games and abysmal at winning them. Any arrangement they might’ve made, silent, spoken, whatever, would be impenetrable and maddening, and so George tried to find a way to feel worried for them that didn’t remind him of his mother lecturing his older sister about getting mixed up with the wrong kind of boys. 

And George is happy, in many ways, in the ways that count, but he’s also never felt anything as cosmic and earth-shattering as the way John and Paul must feel about each other. The look in John’s eyes when Paul appeared on the roof, took his hand and whispered _It’ll be okay, I’ll take you home,_ George doesn’t know what that’s like. If he’s going to find that sort of thing anywhere it should be in God. John and Paul have found God in each other, maybe, making deadly eye contact, sitting on the carpet in Paul’s living room, and that strikes George as far too poetic and far too frightening of a thought for him to be thinking. 

They pack up for the day. George lays his guitar in its case and finds he’s calmed down a bit. Perhaps a few years ago he’d have felt the need to catch Paul alone for a moment and find his way in— _Alright, yeah? You and John?_ —but the two of them would work it out, and if they couldn’t, there certainly wasn’t anything George could do about it. 

They left the studio together, John lighting Paul’s cigarette as they walked outside, John sitting in the passenger’s seat. George turned away when he heard the engine start. He felt the odd sensation he should go home and pray—for what he didn’t know.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought :)


End file.
